4th ICC City Lab

Valentina Superti is a Director in DG GROW (Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs) at the European Commission. She is responsible for the policies on tourism, textiles, social economy, and the digitalisation of industry. Previously, she was Resources Director (from 2015 to March 2021), and Director responsible for the single market for goods from 2014 to 2015. 

Her previous responsibilities include serving as Deputy Head of Cabinet of European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, in charge of Industry, SMEs, Galileo and Copernicus, from 2011 to 2014. Starting in 2004 until 2010, Valentina had a number of head of unit responsibilities in the Directorate General for Human Resources and Security of the European Commission, ranging from personnel policy to ethics. In 2002 Valentina joined the private office of Vice-President Neil Kinnock, when she dealt with budgetary and personnel matters, after having served in the Legal Service of the European Commission, dealing with competition law matters. From 1990 to 2000, Valentina worked as a competition lawyer in the Competition Directorate General of the European Commission. Her responsibilities included handling of cases in Anti-Trust matters, then Mergers and Acquisitions, finally State Aids. She worked as a trainee lawyer in Milan in 1988, and in the Legal department of Montedison, Milan, in 1989. 

Valentina is graduated in Law at the Catholic University in Milan, Italy, in 1988. She took a Master in EU Law at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, in 1989.

Matthew Baldwin is a European Commission official: he is Deputy Director-General of DG MOVE where he has been since July 2016.  Amongst his principal professional activities, he is Manager of the Commission’s Mission for 100 Climate Neutral Cities by 2030; he is the EU Coordinator for road safety and sustainable urban mobility; and he is also managing the Commission’s crisis network of COVID-19 transport contact points.    

In his Commission career of more than 20 years, he has served in the cabinets of President Barroso, Commissioner Lamy, and Commissioner Hill, the last as Head of Cabinet.  He has also been Director of Market Access and Industry in DG Trade and Director of Aviation in DG MOVE.    

He is of Italian and British nationality, has two sons, speaks English, French and Italian and lives in Brussels.    

Karen Maguire is a Head of Division managing the OECD's Local Employment and Economic Development Programme in the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. The Programme provides data, policy analysis and capacity building to national and subnational governments in the areas of local economic development, local actions for employment and skills, the social economy, inclusive entrepreneurship and culture. Over the last 15 years at the OECD in different positions, she has authored numerous OECD publications on local development, employment and skills, innovation and clusters. Prior to joining the OECD, she worked as an investment banker for UBS in New York, an international consultant in economic development and a research analyst for the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. She holds a BA in economics and sociology from the University of Chicago and an MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. 

Sharon is responsible for UNEP’s work in circular economy in cities developing practical tools, conducting research, and bringing solutions to implement urban metabolism, systems thinking, and circular economy approaches to cities in developing countries. An urban planner by profession, her career in sustainable urban development started in the early 2000s and has included several topics and spanned several cities/countries around the world. She has worked on eco-industrial development in the Philippines; urban renewal and urban design in Hong Kong; disaster risk reduction in many countries in the Asia-Pacific; and land management in Zambia.  Sharon also coordinates partnerships and joint resource mobilization on sustainable urbanization for UNEP. 

Sébastien Viano gained master’s degrees in International Relations from the University Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne and in European Politics from the Brussels Institute for European Studies. He also holds the diploma of the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies. From 2005 to 2008, he worked in DG External Relations of the European Commission. From 2009 to beginning 2015, he served as parliamentary assistant in the European Parliament providing political advice to MEPs in the following committees ITRE, ENVI, IMCO and AFET. Since March 2015, he has joined the City of Nice and the Metropole Nice Côte d’Azur as Director of European Affairs, Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and External Funding in the Directorate General Enterprise, Economic Development, Tourism et Employment. 

Alain Chateau is graduated from the University of Science and Technology of Languedoc (USTL) (Master of Science in solid state technology) and from the Polytech Engineering School of Montpellier (Engineer degree in microelectronics and integrated systems design). He worked for 30 years for major telecommunication and semiconductor companies and he acquired deep knowledge in the development and application of digital technologies. As distinguished member of the technical staff (DMTS) of a US corportation, he chaired an international patent committee for 7 years and was the official contact at ETSI European Standards Organization.
 
Leveraging his international experience in R&D management, he joined the Nice Cote d’Azur Metropolis in 2014 to deploy digital transformation as a territorial growth strategy by impulsing the creation of local innovation ecosystems through partnership pilot projects and using the territory as an open lab. In late 2020, he got a position as the Assistant to the Vice-President in charge of higher education, continuous education and research. 

Pirita Ihamäki PhD, M.Sc. is a multi-expert in development, creativity and experience in creating unique innovations and increasing vitality. Impressive work history with 15 years of experience in development positions. Pirita Ihamäki is a specialist in leading digital business ecosystems and head of the Gamecoast network and Robocoast's international relations with ECCP, EDIH and DIH centres.

Dr. Catherine Chandler-Crichlow is Dean at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Prior to this, she was the Executive Director of Career Management and Corporate Recruiting and member of their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Executive Council at Ivey Business School at Western University. She also headed 3C Workforce Solutions, an organization that conducts research to determine talent needs across major sectors in Ontario.   

Dr. Chandler-Crichlow was an executive in the financial services sector, a member of the federal Advisory Panel on Canada’s International Education Strategy, as well  as a member of the External Advisory Committee on Inclusion and Diversity of the Ontario Public Service. She is Board Chair of the largest immigrant mentorship network in Canada, and was selected by The Philanthropist as one of Canada’s leaders in the non-profit sector. 

Dr. Chandler-Crichlow holds a doctorate in adult education from the University of Toronto, a Master of Education degree from Harvard University, and both a Diploma in Education and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of the West Indies. 

Agnes Schönfelder is a civil engineer by profession with a university degree and continued studies through further educations on environmental and climate issues. She has been acting in public authorities at municipal and state level over 20 years, since 2009 as the Head of the Climate Change Strategy Office for the City of Mannheim and since 2019 as the CEO of the Climate Action Agency Mannheim in a dual function. With the qualities of a climate protection and environmental specialist as well as in coordination, communication and project management, her main task is to develop integrated climate strategies and to coordinate multilevel stakeholder processes. She is an expert for peer-to-peer exchange and large-scale networking in capacity building processes to transfer of good practice not only within the city, but also on European and international stage. As the person responsible for organising the 9th European Conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns on behalf of the City of Mannheim together with ICLEI; and the voice of the “Mannheim Message” for a Local Green Deal, she has been the speaker for the Local Green Deal City Office since 2021. At the same time, she moved to the Deputy Mayor's Department for Environment and Climate as personal advisor on climate policy. 

Dominic Papa is the Vice President of Smart State Initiatives at the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA). The ACA is the state of Arizona’s economic development organisation and represents 91 cities and towns and 15 counties.  In the role Dominic leverages his expertise in emerging governance models and strategic partnerships to drive a broad portfolio of Smart State projects. 

Yolanda Schmal, Policy Advisor on European Affairs and Circular Economy for the Province of Noord-Holland. My job is to coordinate the European lobby on Circular Economy for our region as well as for the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam. I’m an active member of the CPMR North Sea Commission on topics of circularity and plastics. I’m also involved in the Interreg North Sea Region programme as a Member State representative; responsible for developing the new NSR programme. I live in Amsterdam and I’m a passionate sailor and a fanatic windsurfer. 

Project director with an engineering and urban planning background and experience in the fields of urban planning, design of innovative data-driven urban policies, economic development strategies, landscape and heritage dynamization, social and cultural innovation, content curation, events coordination and management. 

Project Director of BIT Habitat, the Urban Innovation centre of the city of Barcelona, which aims to foster innovation in and with the city, in order to face the global urban challenges for a more liveable, fair, sustainable and resilient city.

Martin Brynskov is a global expert, speaker, and advisor on IoT and smart cities with a human-centric focus. Dr Brynskov is associate professor, PhD, in Interaction Technologies at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is director of the Centre for Digital Transformation of Cities and Communities (DITCOM).  Dr Brynskov is chair of the global non-profit Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) that aims to develop Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) for cities and communities, and of the Danish Standards Committee on Smart Cities and Communities. Dr Brynskov is also the coordinator of the Next Generation Internet of Things (NGIoT), which is the European Roadmap for IoT Research, Innovation and Deployment, lead of the Living-in.EU movement Tech Sub Group, and co-chair of the United Nations U4SSC New Architecture. 

Kim Søvsø has been working in the Smart City and Open Data field for a number of years and with a broad background in web-, business- and organizational development, digitization and teaching in industries such as software, consulting, finance and the public sector, he connects the dots between “all things digital”. Currently, Kim is Head of CITYLAB at City of Aarhus where he heads a team of bright innovation consultants working with Open Data, IoT, robots and AI. Furthermore, Kim is daily manager of a cross-regional collaboration of 16 municipalities and the Central Denmark Region working to improve the uptake of emerging technologies in the public sector. 

Jaime Ventura is the Head of Urban Platform, Data analysis and Digital Services at Porto Digital. For the last four years, his team has been working on the implementation of Porto’s urban data platform, along with a set of applications used by the municipality services, towards the digital transformation of the city. Previously, he worked as a Site Reliability Engineer and also as an Infrastructure Automation Engineer for Paddy Power Betfair PLC (a place full of challenges, where high performance and innovative systems are pushed to the limit) and as System Administrator for the IPP – Polytechnic Institute of Porto (a 15k student higher learning Portuguese institution), managing systems supporting management, communications, authentication, etc. He also worked as a manager for projects ranging communications, software development and system design, for the electronic industry and education.

Member of Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Ms Carme Artigas, since July 2020. He has worked for the last 8 years at the European Commission in the General Directorates of CNECT and SANTE.  At DG CNECT, his work focused on the fields of data economy, data governance and data sharing for the public interest.  At DG SANTE, he co-created an online collaborative forum on health policy with both European and national stakeholders, the EU Health Policy Platform. He has a masters in European Law and International Relations. 

Natalia Currea is the Director of knowledge and innovation for the Agency for Cooperation and Investment of Medellín (ACI Medellin). She is an intrapreneur and innovator, with a Master in International Affairs and 15 years of experience managing strategic partnerships and relationships, designing and developing innovative projects. Expert connecting needs with solutions and mobilizing initiatives with diverse actors. 

Claus Wichmann has been working at Heidelberg City Council in the area of subsidy management and innovation projects since 2018. He has been head of the Subsidies Department there since summer 2020. 

Having studied sociology, philosophy and political science at the University of Heidelberg, Claus Wichmann founded an advertising agency with two fellow students in 1990, which he left 10 years later to become a member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament. After leaving active politics, he applied this accumulated experience to international education projects, including a network of East African universities, the establishment of a vocational school in Vietnam, a project to build a university of administration in Jordan, and higher education collaborations between German and Chinese universities. 

Through his experience with digitization projects, he participated in the relaunch of the specialized literature databases of an international scientific publisher, including a new algorithm-driven data infrastructure. Following this project, Claus Wichmann worked for an American publishing house for several years, marketing bestselling authors at literary festivals worldwide and bringing promising talents under contract from there. As his mother became a nursing case, he returned to Germany permanently. 

Privately, he is politically active and serves on the board of trustees of several committees, including a politician's memorial foundation of the Federal Republic. 

Sebastian Troch, born in 1978, Head of Division ITS & Data Management in the Ministry of Transport and Mobility Transition of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Sebastian started his career at the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 2008 with a management-leadership program after completing a commercial apprenticeship and after finishing his studies in economics. Since 2008 he has held various positions within the cities administration. His path led him to work as a personal assistant to the Senator for Economics, to an advisor for port management until he accepted the challenge of working on Hamburg's Olympic application in 2015. Since 2015 he has been responsible for the digitization of mobility in the Ministry for Transport and Mobility Transition and since 2018 he is the head of a division with 14 colleagues. He brought the city's ITS strategy and its continuation on the way, coordinated and steered the around 200 ITS projects and took care of mobility partnerships with industrial partners. He is also responsible for ensuring high-quality data in the mobility sector and its further development, while regarding the goals of the Hamburg Senate. His daily drive is to make the best possible use of digitization for mobility in an urban city like Hamburg and to implement it profitably.  

Dennis Madsen works at the department of public procurement in the municipality of Aarhus in a newly created position as sustainability consultant. His job is to introduce and implement a higher degree of social and environmental responsibility through the strategic framework of the “triple bottom line”, by prioritising social, environmental and economic concerns in public procurements. Aarhus' work with the triple bottom line is closely connected to the UN Global Goals, in particular SDG 8, 12 and 17. The city's mission is to create a broader understanding of value for both citizens and society through public procurement and to accelerate the green transition of the private sector through sustainable demands.

Veerle started her career as a social entrepreneur herself, supporting the homeless in her hometown Utrecht, the Netherlands. Throughout her bachelor’s and double-degree master’s in European Governance, Veerle has deepened her understanding of social enterprise by following one of the first academic minors on social entrepreneurship & social innovation. Subsequently, combining her passion for social enterprise and European integration, Veerle completed a traineeship at the European Commission’s DG GROW, in the unit working on Social Economy. Currently at EN, Veerle works with leading social enterprise support organizations, governments and various international institutions on a daily basis to advance the social enterprise sector across Europe, and globally.In addition, Veerle has recently taken on a part-time role as Lead Consultant at the World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation.

Konstantinos Soulis is a graduate of Greek School of Public Administration. After his graduation, in 2011, he worked in e-Gov department. In March 2020 he was seconded as Administration and Organization Consultant to the Mayor of Ioannina city, handling matters about Strategic/Business Planning, Annual Action Plan, Annual Review Plan, Goal Setting and Internal Audit function. 

He has a MSc in Information Systems in Businesses by Harokopio University of Athens and a MSc in Project Management by the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration of Russian Federation. He is certified in PRINCE©2 Practitioner, PM2 Advanced, Management of Risk, Management of Portfolios, ITIL. He speaks English, French and Russian.

Antonio J. Jara (CEO), founder of HOP Ubiquitous S.L. (www.hopu.eu), and chair of Data Quality and IoT in IEEE. He did his PhD (Cum Laude) at the University of Murcia (UMU), Spain. These PhD results present a novel way to connect objects to Internet-enabled platforms in an easy, secure and scalable way. He also carried out a MBA and entrepreneurship formation in the ENAE business school and UCAM (2012). He received entrepreneurship awards from ENAE (sponsored by SabadellCAM financial services), emprendeGo (sponsored by Spanish government), IPSO Alliance Award (Sponsored by Google) for its disruptive innovation in the IoT, selected and mentored by the acceleration program FIWARE. Antonio Jara as part of HOPU is focused on the Smart Cities market with solutions for citizens engagements and environmental monitoring (air quality sensors). Antonio Jara has also participated in over 100 international events about Internet of Things as Speaker, over 100 international publications / papers (~5000 citations and impact factor h=37), he holds several patents in the IoT domain and finally he has advised in the IoT domain to companies such as Microsoft and Fujitsu.   

Seppo Haataja is Director for the Smart Tampere Programme at Business Tampere. Smart Tampere is the strategic development programme of the City of Tampere for 2017–2021. The programme builds a sustainable and smart Tampere region in which housing, living and mobility are carbon neutral, and services are user-oriented, digital, and flexible. Opening data enables creation of new applications, products and services that serve the citizens, businesses and the public sector. He also works on boosting Tampere as an internationally recognised hub of expertise, an attractive place for talent, students, companies and new business initiatives. 

Markku Niemi works as Senior Business Advisor at Business Tampere. Digitalization and latest IoT- and sensor technologies, combined with several major city development activities in Tampere region currently, open many new interesting possibilities. We aim to foster innovations by creating open platforms and data assets and by giving companies possibilities to develop, test new innovations and services in real city environment. The learnings, feedback and commercial references from these projects will have significant positive business impact to the involved companies. 

Anni Joela works as Project Manager, Smart Tampere, at the City of Tampere. The Tampere region creates innovative, digital and sustainable smart city solutions, together with companies, research institutions, other municipalities and residents. In Smart Tampere, we use innovative methods to produce easy-to-use digital services for the city’s residents and visitors that they can use at their own convenience. We also offer the residents in Tampere new ways to influence decision-making and the development of their living environment through new channels for participation.

Master’s degree in law and public manager since 2006, he is currently in charge of the organisational units “Services for Vocational Education and Training” and “Services for enterprises and local development” of the Metropolitan City of Capital Rome. 

Experienced in managing and implementing projects related to real estate development, local economic development and education/training. 

Master’s degree with honours in Business Economics and Course of Higher Education in Europlanning, both awarded by Sapienza University of Rome. Expert in new technologies and former IT advisor and trainer. Proficient in the use of English and Spanish. Experienced in European policies and networks, international relations, direct and structural funds, European programmes and projects. 

Jacqueline Pacaud has been leading the team responsible for the Erasmus programme in the vocational education and training, adult and school education for more than 6 years. She has been coordinating the implementation of the previous Erasmus+ programme and the preparation and kick off of the current one (2021-2027), on the basis of the mid term evaluation of the programme and consultation of many stakeholders in these fields and in close cooperation with other Commission services.

Previously, she was responsible for cultural matters, mainly the selection and monitoring of the European Capitals of Culture and the implementation of the European Heritage Label still within the Commission, General Directorate for Education and Culture.

After obtaining her Degree in Law from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, she completed a master's degree in International Legal Studies at The American University (Washington DC) and took part in a Lam Exchange Program with the University of San Diego (California) in Mexico and Guatemala. 

She began her professional career in Madrid as Legal Advisor of the International Division of Banco de Santander, a function she held until she moved to Brussels to begin her career as a European civil servant. She has extensive professional experience within the European Commission, holding various positions of responsibility since 1991 in different areas.  

From December 1994 to June 1999, she was responsible for the negotiations of the EU / Latin America Cooperation Agreements in the Directorate General for External Relations. Subsequently, she coordinated and monitored the development instruments of the 7 EDF in the Directorate General for Development, as geographical manager of Guinea Bissau. During her time in the General Directorate of Education and Culture she held the position of Deputy Head of Unit and was in charge of a team in the Finance unit, giving support and service to the operational units in the budgetary, financial and contractual areas.  

In January 2013, she joined the General Directorate of Enterprise, Internal Market and SMEs as Deputy Head of the Human Resources Unit, a responsibility she will continue to hold in the Agency of the European Commission of Small and Medium Enterprises, (EASME) in the 2014 as Head of Unit.  

Currently, she is Head of Unit at SMP / COSME Pillar, responsible for managing COSME pillar of the Single Market Programme (SMP) and of the COSME legacy (2014-2020), the first EU Programme for the Competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises, of which one of its pillars is the European Business Network (Enterprise Europe Network).

Dana Eleftheriadou steers EU policy development on intelligent cities and the proximity economy, advanced technologies, artificial intelligence with the view to foster Europe’s technological and industrial leadership. She drives policy initiatives and action plans that are leveraging advanced tech to address the world’s biggest challenges and lead the green and digital transition and social welfare.

She designed and oversees the Intelligent Cities Challenge initiative, which helps over 130 EU cities to make the most of cutting-edge technologies to lead a green and digital recovery. She spearheads work on the Tech4Good initiative to promote technology-powered solutions and business models designed to advance social, environmental and economic causes, as well as on Local Green Deals that support cities deliver the European Green Deal at local level.

She has been working on the EU new Industrial Strategy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy, critical AI applications, digitising the European Industry. She served as the EU coordinator of the high-level group Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Entrepreneurship and steers the Member States Board on Advanced Technologies to coordinate national policies and forge the implementation of EU strategies.

She negotiated EU positions in international dialogues, as EU delegate at the G7 ICT and Industry Ministerial and at the G20 dialogue for Innovative Growth; the EU-US dialogue on eCommerce, the Trans-Atlantic business dialogue (TABD), and the OECD. She is member of the World Economic Forum Digital Leaders Group and has been co-author of the World Economic Forum Global IT Report.

Dana Eleftheriadou holds an MBA with distinction from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a MEng in Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece and a diploma in Philosophy from MIT, USA.

Raphaëlle Bolognini has joined the European Commission in September 2021. She works in DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion within Unit G1 ‘Programming and implementation of the European Social Fund+’, where she is in charge of Education & Skills, Green transition and the ALMA initiative.  

Prior to this, Raphaëlle worked 9 years at the European Parliament, dealing with budgetary issues and public investment, also focusing on its articulation with cohesion policies and funds.  

She has an academic background both in Political Sciences and in Economics & General Management. 

Pia Laurila is Policy Officer at DG Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission in the Unit ‘Inclusive Growth, Territorial and Urban Development'. She joined the Unit in 2018, and her responsibilities include, inter alia, sustainable urban development and knowledge-related activities, and in particular, the topics in the area of ‘greening of cities’. Pia is part of the team that is responsible for the setting up of a novel instrument European Urban Initiative under Cohesion Policy. Prior to her current position, she worked 13 years at DG Research and Innovation in the areas of urban, rural and regions-related research and innovation as well as enhancement of synergies between the R&I Framework Programmes and the Cohesion Policy Funds.

Sophie Weisswange works in the Member States Unit dealing notably with Belgium, France and Luxemburg  in the Directorate general for single market,  industry , entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW). As such, she currently follows mainly Belgian, but also French and Luxemburg related matters.  

With the COVID crisis, she has been following the setting up of the resilience and recovery facility and the adoption of the resilience and recovery plans for these countries. She is now focusing on the monitoring of the Belgian recovery plan implementation, and the overall mechanisms that have been put in place at national and European level  regarding economic recovery from the crisis.  

Her in-depth experience of the European Commission allows her to have a global vision of the issues.  

Sophie Weisswange is graduated from the 'Institut d'Etudes Politiques' of Strasbourg, the College of Europe in Bruges and holds a master in law from the Law University of Strasbourg. 

Arthur Treguier joined the European Commission in 2019. He is passionate about the impact of digital in our society, how it changes our work environment and the revolution it brings in our cultural habits. A Political Scientist by training, he graduated from the College of Europe (2019) and Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne (2017).

István Németh is policy officer in DG GROW for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility. He has an MSC degree in Economics, and holds a Master’s degree from the College of Europe.

He started his career working in regional SME support and monitoring the implementation of ESF projects in Hungary. After joining the European Commission he dealt with SME policy, Entrepreneurship, SME support, including working on the Enterprise Europe Network and the ERASMUS for Young Entrepreneurs programme. He was also active on the Commission’s better regulation agenda and especially stakeholder consultation.

Since 2018 he is dealing with Corporate Social Responsibility, focusing specifically on Business and Human Rights. In 2021 he has joined the Unit responsible for Proximity, social economy, creative industries.

Misa Labarile, PhD is a policy officer working at the European Commission on tourism (Directorate-General Internal Market, Industries, Entrepreneurship and SMEs). A social scientist by background, she has worked on EU affairs for more than ten years, not only at the European Commission but also in academia and for the Italian government, in Brussels, Milan, Boston and Rome. Misa speaks Italian, English, French and Spanish. 

Andrea Halmos works at the European Commission, as Policy Officer in the ‘Technologies for Smart Communities’ Unit of DG CONNECT. Her current activities focus on helping cities and communities better harness data and Artificial Intelligence in order to meet their environmental and climate objectives, provide high quality services to citizens and businesses and make better-informed decisions. This includes work on a data space for smart communities, supporting the implementation of AI-enabled, digital services and supporting cities to create their digital twins (Local Digital Twins).  

Previously, Andrea has worked on the implementation and networking of Digital Innovation Hubs as well as for over a decade in the area of digital government. Her main activities included the development and implementation of the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020, the promotion of open and modular digital government and supporting the implementation of digital government at local level.  

Prior to joining the European Commission in 2003, she worked for an internet start-up company as a consultant. Having graduated at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences, she received a master's degree in European studies from the College of Europe and from the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Niels van der Linden is a senior director for Capgemini Inven. He studied Public Administration and State Law. He leads the Public Insights & Data team in the Netherlands and is overseeing all the work on digital policies at the European Commission. Key domains of expertise are Skills and Digital Government. He has been involved leading various projects for the Commission that supported the implementation of the Skills Agenda of Europe.  

Mark joined ICLEI – Local Government for Sustainability in 2003. He is a member of ICLEI Europe’s Board of Directors and responsible for ICLEI’s Sustainable Economy and Procurement work. For 25 years he has worked for, and on behalf of, local, regional and national governments in project, policy and strategy development on sustainability issues such as smart cities, innovation, business and city interaction, procurement, climate change and transport.  

Mark is the Global Director of ICLEI’s Sustainable Procurement Centre, lead of the United Nations One Planet Network on Sustainable Public Procurement, Vice-Chair of the International Green Procurement Network and a member of the European Commission’s Green Public Procurement Advisory Group.  

Mark has a BSc (Hons) degree in Environmental Science and a Masters in Environmental Management.

Daan Walter is a Solution leader in the McKinsey sustainability analytics division Sustainability Insights (SI). He leads the modeling and tooling of SI as well as co-manage the sustainability strategy division of SI that works on long term decarbonization outlooks. Daan led the analysis and writing of the McKinsey report on the EU Green Deal “The path to a carbon neutral Europe”, published in November 2020. Further to this, he among others worked with a large consortia of industrial players to define a national decarbonization plan, he consulted multiple banks on strategies to decarbonize their asset portfolio and he sized the future hydrogen market for a European gas player, including an investment strategy to enter the hydrogen market. Daan holds a masters in Theoretical Physics and a masters in Nuclear Power form the University of Cambridge, as well as a bachelors in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Amsterdam.

Working as a Senior Officer at ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), Elsa support cities in their transition towards greener and fairer economic models. She build on several years of experience in urban development finance, public procurement, land use planning and collaborative governance to provide public authorities with practical solutions to address their sustainability challenges Highlights of Elsa’s careers include having facilitated successful private-public partnerships for urban development projects worth up to £2.5bn in the UK. She is also the lead author of the Intelligent Cities' Challenge's guide providing for cities with tools to accelerate and scale up the implementation of their sustainability goals through Local Green Deals. She holds a Bachelor in spatial economics, law and environmental governance from the University of Cambridge (UK). 

Being highly-motivated and passionate on all subjects relevant to Tourism, Dolores has been involved in strategic plans and programmes to support the development of smart tourism destinations. She has worked for two of the Balearic Islands most important tourist municipalities, Calvià and Palma. Thanks to that plus her experience working  in the Regional Government of the Balearic Islands , as well as the private sector, she was appointed vice-president of the TURISTEC Tourism cluster, and the technological Platform Planetic (current positions). The experience accumulated in the field of tourism, innovation, sustainability and the wide range of EU projects in which she participated, made it possible for her to gain valuable and transferable skills with an overall vision of the needs of cities and regions in terms of improving their policies when becoming Smart Cities/Smart Destinations: smart mobility, risk management, governance, energy efficiency. 

Dolores has worked on EU projects for the last 20 years, and has excellent communication skills and a special talent when it comes to bringing together international partnerships. Cofounder of the Balearic Islands Digital Innovation Hub for Tourism and Artificial Intelligence (DIHBAI-TUR). Dolores is a Law Graduate with an Executive Master in Innovation and currently the technical director in AnySolution. 

Dolores is the coordinator of the Green and Digital transition in Tourism for the Intelligent Cities Challenge and the lead and tourism thematic expert for the City of Cartagena.

Thomas in an Associate Partner in the Berlin Office, where he serves clients in the pubic and healthcare sector. He leads McKinsey’s work on CX in government across Europe and is an expert on customer experience and customer feedback mechanisms. He has led several efforts on citizen-friendly service design and citizen-centric transformation with public sector and healthcare clients. Thomas also is an expert on public data management and data-centric transformations and leads the McKinsey’s work on public registers and administrative data bases.

Stephanie Haag is an Associate Partner in McKinsey & Company's Munich office. She is a both member of McKinsey's Travel, Logistics & Infrastructure Practice and the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility. Stephanie mainly serves clients in mobility and infrastructure industry, as well as client across industries in business building. Core topics of expertise are around rail and airlines, future mobility, modal share, urban mobility, EV charging infrastructure, and sustainability.  

Some of her most recent project experiences include: 

• Market scan for public EV Charging Infrastructure and business case for intermodal company 
• Design of cost transformation programs and post COVID-19 strategies for rail operators 
• Development of levers to increase modal share and design of optimization for infrastructure investments 
• Development of digital strategies for airline groups, rail operators and urban mobility incumbents 
• Identification of options to upgrade road infrastructure by using data and applying intelligent traffic management  

Stephanie holds a BSc in Aviation Management from European Business School (EBS) and a MSc in Strategic Management from Rotterdam School of Management.

Georgina is an Account Executive at global communications agency BCW and is based in the Brussels office. Georgina has expertise in strategic and digital communications, she has lead powerful social media campaigns and developed strong creative concepts and messages for a range of clients. She works across a range of policy areas from sustainability to digital to consumer.​​ Georgina holds an LLB in Law with Study in Continental Europe from the University of Bristol.